A lot has changed since Jules Verne wrote his Around the World in 80 Days in 1873. For one, it doesn't take 80 days to travel around the entire globe. Planes can get you from San Francisco to Singapore and back again during the course of one or two nights' sleep

But we've found an even quicker way to travel the world: Le tour d' Instagram.

In the embedded Google Map above, you can travel from the Pyramids of Giza to the peaks of Las Leñas to the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. You can peer down from above the fjords of Norway, gaze off the edge of the world's tallest building in Dubai and climb sand dunes in the Gobi Desert. No round-the-world plane ticket required. Read more...

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The federal budget is incomprehensibly large: $3.5 trillion to fund everything from benefits payments to courts to cops to education to research. There are hundreds of ways to slice it up, but some of the simplest come from the nonpartisan agency in charge of analyzing the budget, the Congressional Budget Office.

Here are six graphics CBO Director Doug Elmendorf used in a recent lecture to students at Harvard University, along with how they help to understand the nation’s fiscal situation.

How Serious Is the Debt Problem?

There’s a heated debate over how much debt is too much, but most agree that the long-term trajectory is not good. The debt is expected to rise, fall and rise again before the decade is out. It's high, but not high enough to describe as an immediate crisis–at least not according to House Speaker John Boehner, Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan or President Obama. In the longer term, however, the debt is expected to balloon. Read more...

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Facebook is considering buying GPS company Waze for $800 million to $1 billion, Israeli daily newspaper Calcalist reports.

The talks are in an advanced stage, Calcalist claims. The two companies started talking started six months ago, due diligence is underway and a term sheet was signed

Waze, whose turn-by-turn navigation app uses crowdsourcing to gather real-time conditions on the road, has had 44 million users in April 2013

The two companies are partners; Waze already lets users share their drive with Facebook friends. Buying a social, mobile app with a strong user base makes sense for Facebook; if the acquisition happens it'll be interesting to see what Facebook's plans are in the GPS/location space Read more...

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Luxury e-commerce destination Net-a-Porter launched out of the London flat of founder Natalie Massenet in 2000, a time when few thought $1,000+ dresses and shoes could be sold online in any significant volume. It was the tail-end of the dot-com bubble, and Net-a-Porter survived its burst, turning a profit for the first time in 2004, and selling to Swiss luxury goods holding company Richemont at a value of $533 million in 2010.

Alison Loehnis (pictured above) is the managing director of Net-a-Porter's flagship site, Net-a-Porter.com. She has been an integral part of Net-a-Porter's growth, both before and in the years following Richemont's acquisition, joining the company as vice president of sales and marketing in 2007 from LVMH, where she served as global sales and marketing director for Thomas Pink. In the years since, Loehnis has supervised a range of customer and brand touchpoints at Net-a-Porter, including (per her description) marketing, PR, advertising and publishing, customer care, creative, content and sales. Read more...

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Astronomers are calling for volunteers to help them search for "space warps," rare and distant galaxies that bend light around them like enormous lenses.

Citizen scientists participating in the Space Warps project, which launches Wednesday, could help shed light on the mysterious dark matter pervading the universe and aid research into a number of other cosmic phenomena, organizers said.

"Not only do space warps act like lenses, magnifying the distant galaxies behind them, but we can also use the light they distort to weigh them, helping us to figure out how much dark matter they contain and how it’s distributed," Phil Marshall, a physicist at Oxford University in England and one of Space Warps' leaders, said in a statement Read more...

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Tesla Motors had reached a really important milestone in Q1 2013 — for the first time in the company's ten-year long history, it turned a profit

Tesla's GAAP profit for the quarter was $11 million; sales were $562 million, up 83% from last quarter.

The company sold 4,900 vehicles in Q1. It expects to sell more than 15,000 vehicles per year in the U.S. and more than 30,000 vehicles per year globally

The ride to profitability was a bumpy one for Tesla. Until very recently, the company CEO Elon Musk had to fend off critics claiming the company is a "loser". He won't have to do that for at least another three months Read more...

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Chances are by now, you’ve probably heard of Temple Run. The infinite runner-style game has you run through a virtual world level-free, trying to last as long as you possibly can without dying. Highly popular, the original version of the game is currently the 9th most downloaded iOS app of all time, and has spawned an exceptionally popular sequel, as well as several Disney-themed versions.

Following in Temple Run’s successful footsteps, Zynga is releasing its own endless runner game Thursday. Called Running With Friends, rather than a game you play by yourself, Zynga making the game social.

“There are all these new infinite runner games on the market today that are awesome,” Travis Boatman, Senior Vice President of Mobile for Zynga told Mashable. “We really wanted people to be able to play these kinds of games with each other” Read more...

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Google has updated its Google Earth Android app to version 7.1, bringing several important improvements, most notably the support for Street View

If you want to explore the Earth from the street level, zoom into an area and the Pegman — the little yellow guy signifying the availability of Street View — will appear in the right hand corner. Drag and drop him into a street and you'll jump right into Street View

Other new features include an improved, streamlined interface. By clicking on the Earth logo in the top left corner you can enable various Google Earth layers, including 3D buildings, Wikipedia and Panoramio photos Read more...

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A device that was developed over 200 years ago is making a comeback, thanks to Kickstarter. Patented in 1806, the camera lucida was a common optical drawing tool that helped artists accurately sketch objects, but later fell out of use.

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, here's how it works:

"It consists of a four-sided prism mounted on a small stand above a sheet of paper. By placing the eye close to the upper edge of the prism so that half the pupil of the eye is over the prism, the observer is able to see a reflected image of an object situated in front of the prism, apparently lying on the paper. He can then trace the image with a pencil. Read more...

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UPDATE: In response to the video, the Duncanville Independent School District issued the following statement to CBS:

“The district is aware of the video and we are currently addressing the situation. As a district with a motto of 'Engaging Hearts and Minds' we focus on building positive relationships with students and designing engaging work that is meaningful. We want our students and teachers to be engaged, but the method by which the student expressed his concern could have been handled in a more appropriate way. We are and will continue to be open to listening to students.”

What began as an outburst in class is now making the rounds online. Video of a student reprimanding his teacher for her allegedly poor teaching methods has gone viral Read more...

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They're the services turning your physical location into valuable data — and using that data to offer you a variety of services. Love them for their convenience or hate them for their invasion of privacy, geolocation applications are making a big push for your attention.

And after a year of very public privacy failures from services such as Girls Around Me, Highlight and Skout, the industry and consumers are both looking for clear-cut winners. Here's a rundown of three apps that should be on your radar for work, play and travel.

1. Here On Biz: Instant business networking. Think a social LinkedIn check-in that helps you literally find nearby professionals. So now you can network wherever you go. The free iPhone app [iTunes link] shows you nearby people based on their work and interest. Think how valuable this could be when you're at a networking event and don't have a clue who the people are around you. Read more...

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The Launchpad is a series that introduces Mashable readers to compelling startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Good.co

One-Liner Pitch: Good.co lets you see how well your personality matches up with specific companies and employees, so you end up at a place that's really the right fit for you.

Why It's Taking Off: It offers job hunters a way to find companies that are a better fit and companies a way to find employees who are a better fit, so neither waste more time and money than necessary.

Job listings can give you a sense of whether you're qualified for a particular role, but not necessarily whether you're a good fit for the company and its culture. One new website hopes to change that. Read more...

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Today's cars have advanced crash prevention breaking, intelligent heads-up displays and pre-crash alters, but customers still think the tech companies Apple and Google can do a better job, according to a survey by CarSafetyRules.com

The study asked 1,000 new car owners in the UK which brand would be most likely to develop technologies to best improve road safety. Apple took the lead, with 21% of the vote, with Google ranking a close second at 19.8%. Both beat Volvo, a brand widely known for high safety standards, which garnered 19.7% of user confidence

Apple's victory is somewhat surprising, given both Google's and Volvo's successful forays into self-driving cars. Alternately, Apple has not made any formal announcements regarding plans for a full fledged car Read more...

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Eye-tracking technology has been in the news lately, thanks to rumors indicating that it would be included in the new Samsung Galaxy S4. As it turned out, Samsung's Smart Scroll actually uses a different technology but, for the American Civil Liberties Union, this is still a good time to investigate whether these kinds of technologies pose any privacy risks.

In fact, even though the technology is still not ready for prime time, researchers note that its potential future impact on our privacy is huge

"Once the technology for eye-tracking is in place, it will glean information conveying not only what we read online, but also how we read it," writes UCLA electrical engineering professor John Villasenor. "Did our eyes linger for a few seconds on an advertisement that, in the end, we decided not to click on? How do our eyes move as they take in the contents of a page? Are there certain words, phrases, or topics that we appear to prefer or avoid? In the future, will we be served online ads based not only on what we’ve shopped for, but also on the thoughts reflected in our eye movements?" Read more...

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Productivity is a tricky thing to track, but you probably have a good idea of when you get your best work done. Unfortunately, it's not always at the most convenient times, is it?

In this comic, Angela Liao of 20px shows us the difference between when we expect to be productive and when we're actually productive — all in nifty graph form. What is it about 1 a.m. that makes the muses appear?

Comic illustration by Angela Liao, 20px. Published with permission; all rights reserved. Read more...

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It looks perhaps too good to be an accident, but this photo is definitely in the running for best photobomb in sports history.

The pic features two fans and NBA star Tim Duncan of the four-time NBA champion San Antonio Spurs — the latter making his cameo digitally. Between the older fellow's hand being in the exact right position, the TV being paused at precisely the correct moment and the younger guy standing in the perfect spot, this thing is like a photobomb perfect storm

That confluence of factors made the photo very popular with sports fans online Wednesday. It hit the front page of Imgur and has been viewed more than 500,000 times there since going up seven hours ago Read more...

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Reddit, as some of us know all too well, is an Internet rabbit hole if ever there was one. After your first taste of the sprawling site's funny pics and funnier comments, it's hard not to come back for more. And more. And more.

But which parts of the world are most obsessed with the social media site? A recent post to the official Reddit blog holds some interesting insights

Redditors in Austin deserve a big pat on the back for making their city the world's most prolific in terms of pageviews per capita, according to the post. The top 10 for that category is made up of three American cities, three Australian cities and four Canadian cities. Here are the complete world rankings of Reddit pageviews per capita: Read more...

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If you're an Apple fanboy or fangirl, the MacBook's design is perhaps already pure perfection to you. But if you're looking to differentiate your Mac from the rest of the crowd, check out these wood keys for your Apple laptop or desktop keyboard that add a natural accent.

New York-based design firm RAWBKNY has designed wooden keys that you can affix to your existing Mac keyboard, as shown in the video above.

The keys are made from real rosewood or bamboo, but the wood is only about 0.6 mm thin, so it won't add bulk or touch your MacBook screen. With wood key layouts available for the unibody MacBook ($40), the wireless Mac keyboard ($40) and the wired, numeric Mac keyboard ($45), all you do is peel and stick the adhesive-backed wood keys. Read more...

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The "cloud" is great for places that enjoy uninterrupted power and Internet connections. But for large swathes of the world, where blackouts are common and connections unreliable, accessing files stored remotely on the Internet is a massive hassle. Forget about downloading Adobe Creative Suite. Simply working on a Google doc can be aggravating.

That's why the people behind Ushahidi, open disaster-mapping software, built BRCK (pronounced "brick") BRCK is a Wi-Fi router and mobile modem in one, with eight hours of battery life to keep it going when the power runs out. It can sit in an office connected by ethernet and switch seamlessly to a 3G or 4G connection if the line goes down Read more...

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She's back and we couldn't be happier

Comedian Kristen Wiig heads home Saturday as the host of Saturday Night Live, and if these promos are a sign of what's to come, we'll all be happily reunited

Wiig was a regular on SNL for seven years, but left in 2012 for film, including Bridesmaids.

The world and apparently her co-stars, however, haven't fully forgiven her for disappearing from Saturday nights. Maybe that's why her former co-star Fred Armisen barely hesitates before giving her a good slap to the face. We echo his thoughts: "Never leave us like that again, Kristen." Read more...

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In the list of unlikely video game controllers, a cello is up there, probably next to celery stalks and maracas.

Yet Joost van Dongen's Cello Fortress takes up that challenge, blending the lines between game performance art, classical music and video games. The game challenges the cello player to attack four other controller-welding players using only musical notes.

The above video explains the Cello Fortress control scheme: each type of note produces a different kind of attack. A sequence of fast high notes fires machine guns at your enemies, while playing slow chords brings the heat of homing missiles. Since something like "slow chords" can cover a wide variety of notes, the cellist can be creative with his or her music selection while still playing along. Read more...

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The quirky characters of The Office have made TV audiences laugh, cringe and maybe even shed a tear for the past nine seasons

Whether it was terrible life advice from Michael Scott, beet farming tips from Dwight Schrute, a sweet love story between Pam and Jim or epic inter-office pranks, the show made selling paper Scranton, Pa. feel riotously relatable.

Next Thursday, Dunder Mifflin closes its doors forever, and we have to say goodbye to the antics that filled a void in our own 9-to-5 jobs. But before we file away our dreams of being employees of Michael Scott or colleagues with Angela, Oscar and Kelly, let's relive the funniest Office moments of all time and all cubicles Read more...

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Since the first disposable diapers hit the market until now, parents haven't needed an electronic device to tell them when their baby has wet himself. Huggies Brazil is attempting to address this perceived need with TweetPee, a plastic device that attaches to a diaper and then tweets when your young one has urinated.

As this video (in Portugese — no English version appears to exist) shows, TweetPee connects to an iPhone app that alerts you when the device's sensor picks up increased humidity. No word yet on whether TweetPee will head to the U.S. market. Huggies reps could not be reached for comment. However, the brand has just launched a program awarding $15,000 grants to up to 12 people who come up with "innovative product ideas." Read more...

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Step aside, North Korea and Iran, there's a new Photoshop master in town: South Korea.

Yonhap News, a publicly-funded South Korean news agency, published this photo Tuesday claiming to show South Korean President Park Geun-hye shaking hands with U.S. President Barack Obama. However, it's clearly two separate photos stitched together — very poorly.

Image courtesy Yonhap News

The badly photoshopped picture accompanied Yonhap's report on a Tuesday meeting between Park and Obama — a meeting which actually did happen and wherein real, honest-to-god handshakes were exchanged:

Image via Alex Wong/Getty Images Read more...

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Kwikset announced on Thursday a Bluetooth-enabled deadbolt lock that pairs up your iPhone 4S or iPhone 5, and will let you into your abode with a single touch. From the looks of it so far, there won't be an easier way to let yourself into your home

According to Kwikset, all you need to do is have your iPhone with you, and the phone's Bluetooth Smart-Ready tech communicates with the lock, making it receptive to your touch — and no one else's. Besides using Bluetooth 4.0's own encryption, the company says there's also military-grade encryption at work. For burglars, it sounds like it would be easier to break the door down than to try to untangle this veritable fortress of cryptography. Read more...

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Groupon may not be out of the woods yet, but it did have a better-than-expected March quarter.

The daily deals company reported earnings-per-share of $0.03 on revenue of $601 million for the quarter, matching Wall Street's consensus estimate for earnings and beating its estimate of $589 million in revenue. That's the first Groupon has come in ahead of Wall Street's revenue projections since the first quarter of 2012

Most of that revenue growth came from North America, where sales increased by 42% year-over-year. However, Groupon is still handicapped by its international operations, where sales decreased by 18% year-over-year. Read more...

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Mars One may be grabbing headlines for pushing one-way manned missions to Mars, but buried deep in NASA's photo archives lies proof that the agency has been thinking about the journey for decades.

Commissioned by NASA, these artists' concepts show how the agency (unofficially and very loosely) once envisioned putting humans on the Red Planet. While some technology in the imagery evolved as NASA scientists learned more about Mars, many of the concepts still hold true in the agency's modern-day mocks for a 2030 manned mission

Perhaps even more interesting is that Mars One's architectural plans — which call for greenhouses and inflatable habitats — are concepts these NASA artists illustrated more than 25 years ago. Read more...

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This is not a good signBarely a month into the first "Facebook Phone's" life, the Facebook Home-sporting HTC First price has been slashed from $99.99 with a two year contract to just 99 cents with the same AT&T two-year agreement.

AT&T's own web site makes the situation look, if possible, worse, by displaying the original HTC First price, $350.99 and subtracting $350. That's a 99.72% discount.

While this is great news for anyone who wants an attractive, workman-like 4G phone with Facebook Home built in at a cut-rate price, it does not bode well for this first HTC/Facebook collaboration and future Facebook Phones. Read more...

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In case Jim Halpert's pranks and cutesy-ness with Pam on The Office don't get you all doe-eyed and swooning over the dude, actor John Krasinski's recent appearance on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon will surely set your heart aflutter

The actor played a round of lip sync with Fallon and proved that he could do a mean impersonation of Katy Perry. Fallon doesn't do so badly himself with a powerful rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

But the real winners are the viewers who get to watch Krasinski serenade — while removing his clothes — Fallon with a Boyz II Men jam. Go home Internet, today can't get better Read more...

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This kiss cam breakup from a minor league baseball game is definitely funny. But is it for real? That's harder to say

The clip comes from a recent Fresno Grizzlies game, where the stadium Jumbotron went into the ol' ballpark staple kiss cam. You're probably familiar with the concept: sports cameramen find couples in the stands and put them up on the big video board in hopes of eliciting a public smooch for all to see. It was uploaded to the Grizzlies' official YouTube account

Most folks seem happy to oblige, except for one guy who looks more interested in his phone call than his date. The first time he shoots her down triggers a surly crowd reaction. The second time gets an even more negative reaction. The third time? She dumps her drink on him and storms off Read more...

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